2017 Travel Writing Contest Submissions are Open!

It's that time of year again! Time to type up those travel articles, travel anecdotes and travel
reflections. We want to read
about that place that changed you, about the experiences
you can't wait to share with other travelers. Whether your work is
humorous, informative, quirky or profound--send it in. This year, submissions are free until May 31; afterward there will be a nominal charge (see below). The purpose for this is twofold: to prevent what happened last year (300 submissions in the last two weeks) and to perhaps add a bit of money to the prize pot. All proceeds from entry fees will go towards the prize money.

Born in St
Helens, England, Graham Mercer won the BBC
Wildlife Magazine’s “Award for Nature Writing” in 1988 and has published 15
books, including two coffee table editions and guidebooks to Tanzania’s major
national parks and to Zanzibar. Mercer has also published many magazine articles, mostly
on Tanzania’s parks and wildlife, and has won or been runner-up in nine
writing competitions, including the 2016 I Must Be Off! Travel Writing Competition in which he took first place.

Mercer is a member of
International MENSA and a Fellow of the Royal Geographic Society.

He and his wife left Tanzania in 2012 to live in Cheshire,
England, where he is presently writing his “safari memoirs” and adjusting, with
glacial slowness and the aid of four heavy sweaters and a succession of long
johns, to the northern English climate.

Up to three photos may be submitted with your entry. Photos are not necessary to win.

Previously unpublished work only! Blog posts are considered published.

No entry fee until May 31. FREE ENTRY PERIOD IS CLOSED. From June 1 to July 31 there is a €3 entry fee payable via PayPal. To enter follow these easy steps:

Using PayPal pay €3 fee to christopher@imustbeoff.com

Email your
travel article and your 50-word bio in the body of the email or attached to the email. Please put TRAVEL WRITING CONTEST in the subject field. Email address: christopher@imustbeoff.com

You will receive a confirmation from I Must Be Off! that your submission has been received and that you have been entered into the competition. This is not an automatic notification, so please be patient if it takes a few hours.

Open to anyone worldwide, but you need (access to) a PayPal account to enter after May 31 and in case you win.

Entries must be in English

From June 1 to July 31, you may enter as many times as you like. Each entry must be accompanied by an entry fee, €3 each.

Deadline for submissions: July 31, 2017

Entries will be read blind by this year's judge and travel writer, Graham Mercer. It is not necessary to delete identifying
information from your entry. If your name appears anywhere, it will be removed before it's forwarded to the judge.

Word doc, docx and rtf files only.

Simultaneous submissions accepted but please contact I Must Be Off! immediately upon acceptance elsewhere. Entry fees cannot be refunded.

Finalists announced in mid-September. Winners announced and published in autumn 2017.

The Prizes:

The Top entries will be published at I Must Be Off! with authors' permission. Authors retain copyright.

First place prize: €200

Second place prize: €50

Readers' Choice Award: €50 based on unique hits and comments tallied on October 30.

All proceeds from entry fees will be added to these amounts.

Good luck and happy writing!

I must be off,
Christopher

_________________________________________

Christopher Allen is the author of Conversations with S. Teri O'Type (a Satire),
an episodic adult cartoon about a man struggling with expectations.
Allen's writing has appeared, or is forthcoming, in FRiGG, Eclectica Magazine's
20th-Anniversary Speculative anthology, Indiana Review, Night
Train, Juked, SmokeLong Quarterly: the Best of the First Ten Years anthology, The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, [PANK] blog,
Necessary Fiction, Word Riot, Bootsnall Travel, Chicken Soup for the
Soul and lots of other good places. A finalist at Glimmer Train in 2011, Allen is a multiple nominee for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, Best Small Fictions, storySouth's Million Writers Award and others.

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Hi, sweet reader. I Must Be Off! is the expat, gluten-free photo-literary travel(b)logue of me, Christopher Allen. It's a visual journey. I hope you'll stop by and comment. You can also find links to my writing there.

My recent work has appeared in [PANK], FRiGG, Matter Press, The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, and To Carry Her Home: Bath Flash Fiction, Volume One. My debut collection of flash fiction, Other Household Toxins, is forthcoming from Matter Press.